Vitals. Greg Bear

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СКАЧАТЬ only to get a breath of fresh air. I crawled back over the third, empty couch to undog the hatch.

      ‘It’s too rough out there,’ Dave said.

      ‘Screw you,’ I muttered, and crept into the tunnel, an L-shaped pipe barely two feet wide. Swearing, I knelt in the usual small puddle of water at the base of the tunnel, got to my feet, and crooked my arms to twist and spin more levers and wheels.

      The hatch sighed and my ears popped. Spray showered down. I sucked in the cold sea air, incredibly sweet and alive. I searched for the Sea Messenger and found her at three o’clock, well over a thousand yards away.

      I yelled into the wind and waved my arms. I didn’t dare crawl out any farther – Dave could close the hatch on me and take the sub down again. Lodging my leg, I held on to the mesh deck behind the pressure sphere.

      Dave glared up at me through the bubble, still in his seat. He looked frightened. He was calling on the radio. That made sense, but I still wasn’t ready to forgive and forget. Sea Messenger should have been almost on top of us, responding to our emergency signal with her H-shaped crane lowered for retrieval and the rolling ramp extended like a tongue.

      ‘They aren’t answering,’ Dave shouted up through the tube. ‘Come back in and shut the hatch.’

      ‘No way!’ I shouted. ‘I’m staying out here.’

      ‘Look,’ he said, his voice hoarse and crackling, ‘This is a rough sea. If you’re staying out, get all the way out and shut the hatch or we’ll ship water and sink.’

      The waves were pounding stronger than ever and the wind blew stinging spume off the whitecaps into my eyes. The ship’s lights were out and it was dusk. All the running and rigging lights should have been on, and the searchlights jabbing over the water, looking for us.

      Nothing. Sea Messenger looked dead.

      ‘I’m going to bring us closer to the ship,’ Dave shouted. ‘And I’m closing the hatch, damn it!’

      ‘All right,’ I said. Reluctantly, I dropped down and dogged the top hatch. But I stayed in the tube, squeezing my back against the metal wall, still cold from the deep.

      ‘I’m really all right,’ Dave insisted, his voice hollow in the sphere. ‘I swear, I don’t know what happened.’

      ‘You tried to kill us.’

      ‘That can’t be right! I swear.’

      I let it go. Dave moved over into my seat and tried to disengage the autopilot. There was something wrong, and at first it wouldn’t let him. He pulled up the touch pad and keyed in an override. The autopilot disengaged with a small chime.

      Then Dave maneuvered with my stick.

      The sub cut through the chop to avoid being overturned. We lurched like a bucket in a slow-motion paint shaker, with nauseating jerks and some rough slams. Standing in the tube in a rough sea could leave bruises for days. I climbed down into the sphere.

      The sub bobbed up on a roller and we caught another glimpse of Sea Messenger. People ran along the upper deck toward the forecastle. The lights were still out. Another bob, and I saw a flash of brilliant yellow-orange near the stern, then five more, rapid.

      ‘Did you see that?’ I asked, as if once again Dave and I were partners trying to outguess the rest of the world.

      ‘Muzzle flash,’ he said. His face went gray. ‘What in hell?’

      ‘How do we get on the ship if they won’t grab us?’

      ‘We abandon the DSV, swim to the ship and use the stern ramp. More than likely a wave will wash us up.’

      ‘Or brain us,’ I said.

      Dave did not disagree. ‘There’s a diving platform on the port side – if they have it down in these seas, which isn’t likely. We need to be out of the water fast.’

      That was important. Immersed in the icy waters for ten or fifteen minutes, even in our silvery thermal suits, could be deadly.

      ‘It’s important we let them know what happened,’ Dave said.

      ‘That you went nuts down there?’ My teeth chattered.

      The pilot seemed to accede to this scenario. ‘Your brain is not in charge,’ Dave said. He looked like a frightened little boy confessing something dire. ‘They can just ring you up and it’s all over.’

      Dave Press’s mind was heading south, then north; he didn’t even know how to read the compass needle.

      Abruptly, Sea Messenger lit up like a squid boat on parade: beacons, running lights. Broken ribbons of silver and red and green glinted off the waves. A searchlight beam swung out from the bridge through the moist air, and another switched on near the stern. They swept the water, then converged on Mary’s Triumph. Dave shielded his eyes.

      ‘Somebody finally woke up,’ he said. He wiped his face with his hands and stared at the palms, shaking his head forlornly. ‘That’s it for me. You coming?’

      Dave pushed himself out of his seat and gave me a look as if he were going for coffee, did I want some, too?

      ‘You can’t swim from here,’ I said. Was that what he intended to do – abandon the sub and strike out for the mother ship? We were too far away, even for a strong swimmer, in this sea.

      He grabbed an overhead bar and hauled himself upside down to the hatch, then, with expert grace striking in a plump guy, swung himself around and knelt on the third couch.

      ‘So long,’ he said. ‘Take my advice, for what it’s worth. Stay away from the telephone.’

      Before I could react, he shinnied up the tube. I swore and went after him, but he was quick as a seal, out the hatch before I could grab an ankle.

      That left me halfway in the tube, stuck at a precarious angle. My leg bent, and the sub lurched. For a moment, my upthrust knee jammed in the pipe and I couldn’t move. I struggled to drop back, and when that didn’t work, to crawl higher.

      I had been tamped down like a cork in a bottle.

      A wave washed in through the upper hatch and swamped me. Sputtering, I pressed on my thigh with both hands and shoved the knee down hard, painfully, past a welded steel join, then squirmed to grab a rung.

      I poked up through the hatch. Twilight was leaving the western sky, a lovely orange fading into blue and then black. Stars filled the zenith, visible even through the spray from swooshing and bumping whitecaps.

      Dave was nowhere to be seen. Another wave almost blinded me and spun the sub around. I palmed water from my eyes and blinked at the nightmare. The Sea Messenger had come about and was backing her screws two hundred yards to starboard, whipping the sea into dancing foam.

      A flare shot up from the ship’s deck and arced over Mary’s Triumph. They knew where I was.

      ‘Get Dave!’ I shouted, and swung my arms over my head. ‘Man overboard!’

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